The Cost Of Bureaucracy

Among the opinion writers I read more or less regularly, David Brooks stands out as one of the most annoying. Three times out of five (okay, that’s just a statistical guess), I find him patronizing, preachy and un-self-aware. But then, in those other two columns, he addresses real issues and does so perceptively.

The column that prompted today’s post is one of the latter. In it, Brooks considers what he calls the “growing bureaucratization of America.” His first paragraph sets out his thesis/observation:

Sometimes in this job I have a kernel of a column idea that doesn’t pan out. But other times I begin looking into a topic and find a problem so massive that I can’t believe I’ve ever written about anything else. This latter experience happened as I looked into the growing bureaucratization of American life. It’s not only that growing bureaucracies cost a lot of money; they also enervate American society. They redistribute power from workers to rule makers, and in so doing sap initiative, discretion, creativity and drive.

As regular readers of this blog know, a couple of years ago I retired from a position as a college professor, a cog in what has to be one of the most prominent examples of the trend Brooks is exploring–a university. I still recall a conversation with a colleague who had preceded me in the trip from “real life” job to the groves of academe. She warned me that what would drive me insane was the utter lack of urgency I would encounter. She was right–if an identified problem was considered really urgent, it might get addressed in a year or two. Universities are very bureaucratic.

Brooks proceeds to provide the requisite overview:

Over a third of all health care costs go to administration. As the health care expert David Himmelstein put it in 2020, “The average American is paying more than $2,000 a year for useless bureaucracy.” All of us who have been entangled in the medical system know why administrators are there: to wrangle over coverage for the treatments doctors think patients need.

The growth of bureaucracy costs America over $3 trillion in lost economic output every year, Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini estimated in 2016 in The Harvard Business Review. That was about 17 percent of G.D.P. According to their analysis, there is now one administrator or manager for every 4.7 employees, doing things like designing anti-harassment trainings, writing corporate mission statements, collecting data and managing “systems.”

He also acknowledges the pre-eminence of higher education in the bureaucratization of American life. The following paragraph didn’t surprise me:

This situation is especially grave in higher education. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology now has almost eight times as many nonfaculty employees as faculty employees. In the University of California system, the number of managers and senior professionals swelled by 60 percent between 2004 and 2014. The number of tenure-track faculty members grew by just 8 percent.

The rest of the column is devoted to multiple examples of bureaucratic growth and a wide variety of mostly unfortunate and worrisome consequences.

Brooks doesn’t address what is impelling the growth of bureaucracy, or what steps we might take to reverse it. He also doesn’t address what I have long thought to be a glaringly selective response to the phenomenon: Americans are absolutely obsessed with the ways bureaucracy impedes and complicates the work of our various government agencies–but seem not to recognize that the same situation impedes the efficient operation of corporations, large nonprofit organizations and educational institutions.

Sociologists and anthropologists can probably shed light on the reasons for the nation’s increasing bureaucratization. My own hunch–and it’s only a hunch–is that it’s prompted in part by what Brooks calls a desire for “safety first,” a desire to avoid possible dangers. (I also have a sneaking suspicion that it represents a reaction to America’s very litigious society–an effort to avoid the threat of lawsuits by demonstrating the lengths a company or organization has gone to avoid various foreseeable harms.)

Brooks thinks that resentment of the increasingly bureaucratic nature of our society is one of the things motivating MAGA folks. Maybe–although most credible studies attribute pro-Trump MAGA sentiment primarily to racial grievance, not a more generalized impatience with bureaucracy. (MAGA attacks on universities and corporations are focused on that hated DEI, after all, not the number of administrators and managers.)

I tend to think that the growth of bureaucracy is a phase–something that will abate when, and if, civil society sorts itself out and Americans grow up. Think of today’s America as a teenager, needing rules and structure to balance out those raging hormones….

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Our Selective “Anti-Tax” Legislators

In Indiana, Republicans always, always talk about reducing the “tax burden” on Hoosier citizens. They incessantly brag about their solicitude for taxpayers, and Indiana’s status as a “low tax” state.

Well…it turns out that their solicitude is pretty selective; it’s focused on the folks who are most likely to support them, either financially or with their votes. Businesses, corporations, rich folks…Struggling students, not so much.

In fact, not at all.

President Biden’s continuing effort to relieve millions of Americans from a real burden–student loan debt–has already benefitted 35,000 young Hoosiers. A provision of Biden’s American Rescue Plan also amended the Internal Revenue Code so that the discharge of that debt would not be taxable. (As you may or may not know–but your accountant will confirm–if you owe someone money, and that someone “forgives” the debt, the IRS considers the amount forgiven to be income, and you will be taxed on it.) Taxing student loan forgiveness would rather obviously go a long way toward reducing the relief being provided. 

Indiana’s legislators–those solicitous “anti-tax” Republicans–looked at the situation and said “not so fast!”

The Indiana Department of Revenue explains.

The IRS excludes federal direct student loan forgiveness from federal income tax due to an exemption in the Internal Revenue Code. Although the computation of Indiana’s adjusted gross income (AGI) begins with federal AGI, Indiana is a static conformity state, meaning that Indiana’s tax code is linked to the Internal Revenue Code (IRC) as of a specific date. For a provision that impacts federal AGI, the effect on Indiana AGI depends on whether the Indiana General Assembly wholly or partially decouples from the federal provision during the legislative session.

When the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) expanded IRC section 108(f)(5), excluding student loan discharge under certain circumstances from federal gross income, the Indiana General Assembly passed a law decoupling Indiana from that provision in the IRC, and enacted a state provision requiring Hoosier taxpayers to add back the excluded amount to their Indiana AGI.

In 2022, this provision was clarified retroactively to provide that discharges resulting from total and permanent disability, death, or bankruptcy were not required to be added back. That law, IC 6-3-1-3.5(a)(30), still stands; therefore, federal discharge of some student loans between 2021 and 2025 must be added back to Indiana’s adjusted gross income. This includes the one-time student loan forgiveness under the Biden-Harris Administration’s Student Debt Relief Plan, even though the plan was not part of the ARPA.

Nice of them to say that if the loan was discharged because you died, were permanently disabled or bankrupt, they’d let you off the hook.

Indiana thus joins Mississippi, North Carolina and Wisconsin (last I looked, Arkansas was still considering the matter). Students elsewhere in the country are not being penalized.

Things are different for corporations. Indiana is one of only twelve states with corporate tax rates under 5%. That’s in contrast to states like Minnesota (9.8 percent),  Illinois (9.5 percent) and Alaska (9.4 percent). The higher corporate rates in those states evidently made it unnecessary for them to tax students’ debt relief. (I’m sure it has nothing to do with the fact that corporations can afford lobbyists and students can’t.)

A statement issued by Representative Greg Porter at the time student loan repayments resumed (they’d been paused during the pandemic) elaborated on that point. Porter wrote:

More than 900,000 Hoosiers currently have some form of student loan debt, with the average Hoosier owing about $32,000. With repayments beginning soon, many Hoosiers will face financial stress, a stress the Republican supermajority has done nothing to ease for constituents.

“Indiana is one of the few states that taxes an individual’s student loan forgiveness or an employer paying off the student loan for an employee. Last session, my bill to make loan forgiveness dollars exempt from taxation never received a hearing. This is a shame, because Indiana Republicans never shy away from dispensing tens of millions of dollars in tax credits to large companies seeking move to Indiana but refuse to take action to make conditions better for Hoosiers living and working in our state.

The next time you hear Indiana politicians talk about their concern for us poor, struggling taxpayers, you might ask them just which taxpayers they want to relieve–and which ones are unworthy of their solicitude.

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Anecdotes Are Not Data

An often repeated mantra in academia is a reminder: anecdotes are not data. Your run-in with a devotee of the Second Amendment isn’t reflective of majority opinion on the subject of guns; the sermon your pastor delivered about abortion isn’t evidence of a monolithic religious position on reproductive choice…etc. etc.

I know that. I really do.

But anecdotes can be intriguing, even if they don’t amount to statistical evidence. And I’ve been involved in recent conversations that have me mulling over their possible larger meaning–especially since they have displayed an unexpected similarity. I am filing them under “possible omens for November.”

Here’s the context.

As regular readers of this blog know, I have been working as a volunteer on Marc Carmichael’s campaign for Indiana’s open U.S. Senate seat. Marc is running against Jim Banks, who may be the most odious example of MAGA Republicanism running for public office this year, and yes, I know that is really saying something. Among the tasks I’ve taken on is an effort to recruit Republicans willing to identify as “Republicans for Carmichael.” Banks is so extreme (and, from all reports, personally unpleasant) that even many Republican voters detest him, so I figured my odds were good.

I spent 35 years as an active Republican, and most of the people I worked with in what was then still a political party are still alive, so I thought I was an ideal person to make the ask. I began calling former colleagues who I had found to be reasonable, “good government” partisans.

And one after another, I got virtually the same response: I’m no longer a Republican.

A lawyer friend who was a long-serving Republican ward chairman told me he’d not only left the GOP, he’d also cooled relations with friends who’d remained.

A Republican who formerly served as Mayor of a northern Indiana city said he’d love to help, but he was now a Democrat.

A friend who was a former Republican Speaker of the Indiana House said he was no longer a Republican, and didn’t understand how any thinking person could embrace the party’s transformation into MAGA extremism or consider putting Donald Trump back in the Oval Office.

A friend who served two terms as a Republican county-level office holder told me “Sorry, I ‘came out” as a Democrat on Facebook last year.”

Over half of the people I called had similar responses. A couple volunteered to help the Carmichael campaign, but pointed out that it would be incorrect–even fraudulent– to include them in a list of Republican supporters. As one of them said, they are now “proud to be ex-members of the GOP.”

Most of the individuals I have thus far managed to recruit (a list will be announced by the campaign in due course) expressed extreme distaste not just for Banks and Trump, but for the current iteration of a political party they had worked for and supported financially for many years. But they are hanging in, hoping for a turn back to sanity.

I draw two conclusions from these conversations. One is obvious: when so many former party workers and elected officials have left, expressing disapproval and anger at today’s iteration of the GOP, it’s a reasonable assumption that membership in the Grand Old Party is shrinking. Admittedly there is no way of knowing or estimating the size of the cohort represented by these “high information” individuals. It’s possible that the people I talked to don’t represent significant numbers who have disaffiliated. It’s equally possible, however, that there are hundreds more who–for similar reasons– no longer consider themselves Republican.

My second “take-away” is more a theory than a firm conclusion. I have often shared my bewilderment that any sentient American can support Donald Trump, who–in addition to lacking any redeeming personal, ethical or intellectual qualities– is clearly, deeply, and increasingly mentally ill. My inability to get my head around support for Trump extends to my reaction to MAGA folks, who are opposed to every value that really does make America great.

My repeated discussions with individuals who have fled the GOP, as well as my conversations with those who are struggling with their choice to remain, suggests to me that people who clearly see the danger posed by an explicitly racist and fascist movement are largely drawn from the ranks of more informed citizens–people who not only follow political news but who possess the knowledge and experience to understand the nature and extent of the threat posed by the MAGA cult.

Perhaps neither of my conclusions is correct. After all, my evidence is anecdotal.

In the meantime, if anyone reading this still identifies as Republican and is willing to join Republicans for Carmichael–shoot me an email.

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Take An Embryo To Lunch?

First we were told that corporations were people; now, according to the  Supreme Court of Alabama, frozen embryos are people too. (Not sure how you’d take either to lunch…)

Last Friday, the Alabama court ruled that frozen embryos should be considered people and as a result, other people can be held liable for destroying them. (The case focused on whether a patient who mistakenly destroyed other couples’ frozen embryos could be held liable for wrongful death.) As multiple legal and medical experts have confirmed, the decision will effectively end in vitro fertilization (IVF) in Alabama. If similar measures pass in the Red states currently considering them, it would affect hundreds of thousands of patients who depend on IVF and related treatments every year.

At least 11 states have passed state laws broadly defining “personhood” as beginning at fertilization. As one report noted (no link available):

To say that mandating fertilized eggs and frozen embryos be given the same protections as fully-gestated babies sets a terrifying precedent is an understatement. This ruling is a win for the anti-abortion movement, which has long sought to regulate IVF as a means to further expanding the limits of “fetal personhood.” Alabama voters passed a ballot measure in 2018 that granted fetuses full personhood, and after the fall of Roe vs. Wade, the state enacted a near-total abortion ban. According to Pregnancy Justice, nearly half of all criminal cases related to pregnancy in the United States come from Alabama. In Friday’s ruling Alabama State Supreme Court Justice Tom Parker quoted the Bible in his written opinion as justification for the decision, because I guess we’re just treating separation of church and state as a light suggestion these days!

Bible-quoting would-be theocrats are increasingly visible in today’s Christian Nationalist MAGA world. Justice Alito–he of the heavily Christianist Hobby Lobby and Dobbs decisions–has once again expressed his view that the Court should “revisit” its decision on same-sex marriage, and Politico has reported on the Christian Nationalist agenda “waiting in the wings” for a second Trump administration.

An influential think tank close to Donald Trump is developing plans to infuse Christian nationalist ideas in his administration should the former president return to power, according to documents obtained by POLITICO.

Spearheading the effort is Russell Vought, who served as Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget during his first term and has remained close to him. Vought, who is frequently cited as a potential chief of staff in a second Trump White House, is president of The Center for Renewing America think tank, a leading group in a conservative consortium preparing for a second Trump term.

Christian nationalists in America believe that the country was founded as a Christian nation and that Christian values should be prioritized throughout government and public life. As the country has become less religious and more diverse, Vought has embraced the idea that Christians are under assault and has spoken of policies he might pursue in response.

 
 
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Citing To Me

Sunday, I spoke to the Danville Unitarians about equality and the 14th Amendment (which has been getting some public interest lately, thanks to the question whether Section 3 disqualifies Trump). As I was preparing that talk, I looked back through some old posts, and came across one from April of 2016–before Trump and his distorting effect on the issues of governance and public policy that now form the bulk of posts here.

It’s probably tacky to repeat myself, but the post raised a fundamental question with which we continue to wrestle–namely, what does genuine liberty look like–so I’m repeating it here (and yes, sort of taking the day off…)

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In my classes, when I get to the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, I generally begin with a discussion of what Americans mean by “equality,” and the perceived tension between equality and liberty.

Clearly, if we are talking about the operation of law and civil government, we are bound to understand the call for equality as limited to those areas in which government operates, and not surprisingly, there is a pretty substantial literature exploring what it means to be “equal before the law”– to have equal civil rights and liberties.

It isn’t simply us lawyer types, either; political philosophers have argued for years–okay, centuries!–that government efforts to nudge us in the direction of egalitarianism–that is, in the direction of material equality— diminish liberty and are ultimately immoral, because advocates of redistribution tend to ignore the issue (near and dear to more libertarian hearts) of merit or desert.  Those who see it that way read the famous Marxist admonition: “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” as support for expropriation — a system where productive and conscientious workers would be taken advantage of by the ineffectual and/or lazy.

Americans have a deeply-rooted cultural belief that people are poor because they are morally defective, and it didn’t start with the Tea Party. (Actually, it started with Calvin.) I once traced Indiana’s welfare system back to the 15th Century English Poor Laws- laws that prohibited people from giving “alms” to “sturdy beggars.”

So here we are, stuck, policy-wise.

We have a longstanding (and probably insurmountable) concern about the fairness of taking money from people who have (at least theoretically) earned it in order to help people who–for whatever reason–have much less. In more selfish eras (like now) that distaste for redistribution jaundices our approach to taxes for even the most traditional civic purposes. Paying more taxes than absolutely necessary (i.e., police, fire and maybe the sewer system)  is seen as state-sponsored theft, or at the very least, a deprivation of liberty.

As I previously noted, it isn’t difficult to find people arguing that efforts to narrow the gap between rich and poor (redistributive taxes) are assaults on liberty. If there is one thing Americans appear to agree upon, it is the pre-eminence of liberty over other values. What we don’t see discussed very often, however, is what we mean by liberty–and the extent to which government is responsible for ensuring that citizens can enjoy it.

Liberty, at its most basic, is my ability to live a life of my own choosing, so long as I am not harming someone else–my right to live where I like, marry whom I love, choose or reject a church, vote for candidate A rather than B, raise my children as I see fit, opt to spend the weekend at a museum or in the garden….But there are a lot of people in my state (as elsewhere) who do not have liberty in any meaningful sense, that is, the ability to make even these minimal choices, because every waking moment is spent simply trying to survive.

Every person struggling to make ends meet is not a “sturdy beggar,” trying to pull a con. (If research is to be believed, relatively few are.) But rather than trying to change this stubborn cultural meme, or reminding ourselves of the multiple ways we all benefit when societies are more equal materially, let me ask a different question.

If a 10% increase in your taxes could be shown to  allow every American to enjoy at least a minimal level of liberty/self-determination–would you pay it?

Or is the liberty you cherish limited to your own? If it’s the latter–I think that’s privilege you are valuing, not liberty.

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